Sponsored Brands Ads are available for professional sellers enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry. Looking for a guaranteed way to increase the visibility of your brand unlike ever before? Initially referred to as headline search ads, these kinds of ads have been designed to appear in the search results on amazon so that they feature the logo of your brand, and several products as well as the headline.

Normally, sponsored ads will appear at the top of the search results and what is more interesting is that since 2020, it is now possible for you to have a video ad for your brand.

What exactly are sponsored brand ads?

With amazon’s sponsored brand ads, you’ll be having one of the most convenient ways of having potential customers visit either your landing page or storefront. Here, they can then be able to see only your products hence eliminating any distractions from your competitors.

By being able to give your customers a chance to view only your products, it’s going to be much easier for the customers to go through and eventually make a purchase on your product(s).

There’s more, …

In addition to creating a storefront for your customers to visit Another added advantage of sponsored brand ads, it is also possible for you to target keyword searches since they are the PPC kinds of ads. This way, when a customer types in any of your targeted keywords on the Amazon search bar, your ad will appear in the search results.

Even better when they click on the ad, you will then be able to be paid with each click on the ad. It is also going to be possible for you to control the bids on your keyword and a daily basis so that you’re always guaranteed of staying within your desired budget as far as marketing is concerned.

In most cases, your sponsored brand ad will be visible at the top of your search results where you can see 2-3 products of your brand. These can normally be seen on top of sponsored product ads and as such are quite hard to miss. In some cases, the ads can also appear within or alongside the search results.

Why are amazon’s sponsored brand ads necessary?

If you are looking for an effective way of creating awareness on amazon, sponsored brand ads are the way to go.

The target audience for this kind of ad is mainly the customers whose likelihood of shopping for what they search for is high. By being an upper-funnel form of advertising. Let me break this down, …

With amazon advertising, unlike using a third party such as google ads, the customers you target are more prepared to make a purchase. This, as compared to a customer searching for a product on google will increase the chances of not only making a purchase but also clicking on the ad.

The most versatile option there is

Another feature that makes amazon ads a necessity is that as compared to a PPC alternative such as the sponsored product ads, the brand ads allow you to display more than one product.

This way, it will be easier to showcase products that have similar features or complement each other (different types of dishes alongside each other or forks and knives that complement each other). Additionally, you can also keep your focus on the key features which will in turn build trust with a potential customer,

To add icing on the cake, …

Sponsored brand ads feature a unique reporting capability. One of the features included is whereby you can be able to see exactly the number of customers that are making sales for the first time. By having such stats, it will then be easier for you to track your customer base over time.

Sponsored brand ads: How they work.

Before I can take you through the process of setting up the sponsored brand ads, it would be worthwhile to, first of all, have a look at the work behind these kinds of ads.

If you are familiar with sponsored product ads, then it won’t be difficult to wrap your head around how sponsored brand ads work. With these, you’ll also be utilizing the PPC advertising strategy in the sense that you’ll be bidding against your competitors.

The bidding is normally done depending both on the keywords as well as how your budget is for the campaign. Upon choosing this kind of ad, you’ll be choosing from three different ad formats which include the store spotlight, product collection, and video-sponsored brand ads.

Let me take you through each one of them.

1.     Product collection brand ads.

With this kind of sponsored brand ad, you’ll have the capability of targeting up to 3 products simultaneously. The best part about it is that what you select to display and the order of highlighting them is totally up to you.

Irrespective of the order in which you have, you will be able to send traffic directly to either your storefront on amazon on any of the products of your choosing featured in the ad.

Who is this kind of ad for?

If you are looking for a quick way to create brand awareness, then the product collection brand ads would be a viable solution. Designed to increase the awareness of products associated with brands that have a low sponsored ad or organic visibility, this kind of ad allows you to incorporate the products that perform well in your ads.

By blending low-performing products with those that have a better turnaround, the chances of a buyer clicking on your product will be higher. Let’s have a look at what is included in a product collection brands ad.

Taking the example above, you can see the brand logo included in the ad, some of the products they offer and there’s also the ‘Shop Angel’s skates’ text included. The way the sponsored collection brand ads is that when you click on either the text displayed on the ad above the products or the logo, you’ll be redirected to the landing page.

Here, you can then be able to see the three products displayed in the ad. On the products page, there are no distractions from competitor products or ads to click on. To add icing on the cake, it will now be easier for you to get repeat purchases since customers will now know about your storefront.

There’s more, …

It is also possible for you to include a custom image within the ad. For the best results, I’d recommend that you include an image that’s as interactive as possible with the buyers since such will most likely increase your CTR by as much as 30%. I would recommend that you only use an additional lifestyle image if you are confident that it will not work against you.

Last but not least, this kind of ad can also be visible at the bottom of the search results page in the “brands related to this search section”. This will normally appear as shown below.

Before we can have a look at the video sponsored brand ads, let me let you in on some of the tips you can stick to guaranteed to give you the best results when setting up product collection sponsored brand ads.

• First things first, if you opt to use a lifestyle image, it is important that you select one that’s not only of high quality but is also going to show how your product stands out in the best way possible,
• Always be as creative as possible with your headlines. When creating a clickable headline, it is of utmost importance that you adhere to sentence case, consider including a call to action, keep it relevant and refrain from being emotional. If you happen to be unsure, sticking to a descriptive title should do the trick.
• Pay attention to the products you select for the ad and their order of presentation. If, for instance, you have a top-rated product, you can use it to draw more attention to the ad by featuring it with related groups.
• If you happen to have a brand store, linking to it will go a long way in giving you a better return on the ad spend (RoAS). You can also go the extra mile to use sub-pages as well to be as precise as possible.
• Always pay attention to your stock. Considering that your ads will always be active even when out of the products featured, they should only be paused manually.
• To serve the performance goals regarding the goals you have on sales and profit, it is important to start by targeting a long tail product keyword or a specific product keyword.

2.     Video sponsored brand ads

These are not unique types of ads but also when used correctly, you’ll be able to have quite a huge advantage over your competitors.; think of them as super sponsored products. Video brand ads will normally only advertise a single product every time and are designed to link directly to the details page of the product.

I’d recommend that you use this kind of ad especially when you have video collateral when advertising one of your best-selling products.

With video ads, it is important that you keep them as short as possible (15 to 30 seconds) but also informative since one that is well done will let in the customers on everything, they need to know in just a matter of seconds. Because of this, you must take your time editing. I’d recommend that you focus on having them so captivating that they’ll be able to convey the desired message even when muted.

Below is an example of what a video-sponsored brand ad looks like.

Below are some of the things I’d recommend you focus on to get the most out of video-sponsored brand ads.

• In addition to keeping the video as short and informative as possible, ensuring that it plays in a loop will create an imprint in your customer’s mind.
• By focusing on your top-selling products, try to engage with the customers as much as possible by creating a video aimed at either inspiring purchase of your product or informing them of its usage.
• Always show what you are selling in the first couple of seconds rather than saving it for last and spending more time fading in when presenting the product. This will most likely drive more sales.
• It might be tempting to rely on sound but, I hate to break it to you, this won’t be as good as using captions instead. Additionally, ensure that the captions pay attention to the amazon guidelines and when necessary, incorporate the use of on-screen texts. After all, the video ads, by default are muted and as such, it is better to keep them this way.
• You wouldn’t want to risk your ad campaign being rejected, would you? Well, to ensure this does not happen, I’d recommend that you pay close attention to amazon specs.
• Last but not least, targeting specific keywords is first targeted at giving you better sales and profits. Once you have done this, you can go ahead and focus on generic and brand keyword targeting to get better brand awareness.

3.     Store spotlight brand ads

If you have your storefront, this kind of ad is definitely what you ought to go for. Think of store spotlight brand ads as being similar to the product collection ads. The only difference is that rather than featuring products, these are aimed at featuring your store, quite resourceful, right?

What makes having a brand store amazing is that your customers will not be distracted by products from your competitors. As a matter of fact, by combining this with a great shopping experience, you could increase your RoAS by as much as 30%.

Even though a storefront is preferable when you have a lot of products in different categories, you’re not limited to them. After all, it would make more sense to promote your whole storefront without any distractions from competitors rather than going through the hassle of promoting each one of them individually.

Here’s an example of a store spotlight brand ad:

From the ad above, you can see that the Men’s, Youth’s, and Women’s categories are focused on. Upon clicking on any of these, you will be redirected to the product category page where you can see multiple products.

Similar to the other two options we have looked at, here are the best practices to observe when using store spotlight ads.

• Normalize including a call to action in your headline. This time, unlike in the product collection brand ads, it is important to prioritize the fact that you’ll be leading a customer to your shop. As such it is important to make the best first impression by using intuitive language (incorporate words like a visit, create, explore, shop, encourage, etc.).
• Play around with the store images, the display names, and the order in which you list the different product categories.
• To get the attention of an audience that is willing to browse through your products, you could target branded or generic keywords that’ll create brand awareness and encourage brand loyalty.
• The last thing you could do for great results is to channel your resources into creating brand stores that engage the user and have high-quality content.

Setting up brand ads: do it the right way

Now that you have a clear picture of the different kinds of ads to use in sponsored brand ads, let me take you through the process of setting up this kind of ad.

For you to get this kind of ad up and running, you won’t need to break the bank to get started instead, you’ll have to be a seller with a registered brand first.

Step 1: Create a campaign

The very first thing you’ll want to do is head over to the “Seller Central” section on amazon. Here, click on “Campaign Manager” which can be found under the advertising tab.

Step 2: Select the campaign type of your choice.

After clicking on the campaign manager, you will then be redirected to where you can pick a campaign type where you’ll see the sponsored display, sponsored brand, and sponsored product ads.

Select the sponsored brand ads after which you’ll be taken to the settings section. Here, you can specify the name, the date range within which your ad will run and the brand in focus.

Step 3: pick an ad format

After specifying your brand, it’s now time to select the ad format from either of the ones we have covered. Depending on the kind of ad you have selected, the process for setting them up will be different.

With product collection, for instance, you’ll have to pick up to 3 products that are going to be featured after which you can work on the headline, logo, custom image, and order of presentation of the said products.

When focusing on video ads, you’ll have to feature only a single product i.e., one campaign per video. It is important that you also narrow down keywords with a high conversion rate specific to the product in question.

Last but not least, with spotlight ads, it all comes down to building better brand recognition for your storefront. This should include both generic and brand keywords. The reason for this is that people searching using either keyword will be more willing to go through the products in your shop.

Step 4: keyword targeting

With everything else taken care of, choosing your target keyword and then specifying the bid on each one is very critical. It is also important that you do extensive research before selecting the keywords for the best results.

Once you are done with keyword targeting, you’ll simply have to submit the campaign for a review which is normally completed within 72 hours and if all goes well, your ad will go live.

Final verdict

To wrap things up, it’s clear that sponsored brand ads will go a long way to give potential customers the brand experience you intend them to get. At the same time, if done correctly, you’ll be able to divert them from your competitors and even better, increase the odds of getting repeat customers to your shop.

Additionally, considering this kind of ad has the best RoAS as compared to other kinds of amazon’s PPC ad campaigns, you’ll have higher revenue.